Spilled is an extremely cute adventure that challenges players to help clean up the waterways of a colorful, cartoon-like paradise that have been assaulted and stained by a violent polluter. The entire game, which is now available on Steam, is played completely on the water, with players controlling a small red riverboat equipped with a scoop to siphon up oil. As the adventure continues, players get access to a couple more tools for deep cleaning the environment like a magnet to fish for submerged barrels and a water cannon to hose down dirty shorelines.
There are no words or dialogue in Spilled. It really doesn’t need them as the gameplay is both simple and easy to pick up. The general gameplay loop is that players cruise around in their boat vacuuming up oil floating on the top of the water and depositing it inside a glass tank on the back deck of their small craft. When the tank gets full, or whenever a player chooses, they can float on over to the local recycling center to earn a generous number of coins in return for whatever has been collected. And in later levels, in addition to collecting oil, there are also a bunch of floating trash islands that can be pushed over to the collection points to earn even more coins.
The money you collect can be used to upgrade your boat in three key places, with subsequent improvements in the same area costing more each time. One of the most useful upgrades is increasing the size of your oil siphon out in front of your boat, so that bigger swaths of oil or floating trash can be gathered in a single pass. Of course, having a bigger holding tank is also important so that all of that collected oil has somewhere to go, which is the second upgrade option. Finally, your engine can be improved, which provides more power for pushing floating trash and speedier movement all around. In general, it seems useful to upgrade all three areas more or less evenly, although different playstyles might support uneven upgrade patterns if you want, for example, a really slow boat with a huge siphon or something like that.
While collecting spilled oil floating on the water with the siphon is going to be your primary mission, over time you get other tools that can be used to help out the environment too. The first you receive is a giant water cannon. This fun tool can be used to soak the landscape near the water. That’s helpful when oil has breached the shoreline because you can hose it down and force it back into the water where it can be collected. Your water cannon can also be used for special missions, like putting out forest fires. And when you complete a special mission, a helicopter flies in and drops coins on your boat as a reward.
Another tool you will get late in Spilled is a giant magnet, which is used to fish the depths for leaking metal oil barrels. That reminded me a lot of Dredge, which is another really good aquatic-themed title played mostly from a boat. Barrels sell for a lot of money at the recycling centers, so fishing them up is always a good idea. And the really neat thing about the barrel fishing mechanic is that it goes hand in hand with the graphics in Spilled. When you first visit a new area, the water is going to be black with oil, dirty and opaque. But as you continue to clean things up, the color slowly lightens up until it’s pristine and clear once more. Only then can you see the barrels hidden below the surface. That’s a really clever mechanic that constantly rewards players by slowly beautifying the environment as they work.
There are a few other side missions that players can take on in Spilled. A key one is rescuing animals trapped by oil, which you can do by simply running over to wherever they are stuck and picking them up. Each animal has a cute portrait and a name, and all of them will join your crew once rescued. You get a Steam trophy too once you collect them all.
There are also other side missions that generally involve pushing a lost object over to someone. For example, eventually you will come across a pirate ship with a thought balloon overhead that makes it look like they are dreaming of a lost treasure chest. When you find it, you can nudge it over to them using your siphon and collect a big reward. Those side missions are optional, but they also pay well and can generally be accomplished while you are running around cleaning up the environment at the same time, so there is no reason not to make your fellow river denizens happy.
There are eight areas to clean up in Spilled, with the final one ending with an epic boss battle, which I have to admit I was a little surprised to find. A lot of the toxic waste, trash and oil spills were dropped by a serial polluter driving around on a massive ship. In the final level, you will need to fight them by shooting them with your water cannon until they sink once and for all. Just don’t forget to clean up the final mess that their sinking ship leaves behind afterwards.
Spilled is a brilliant game that can almost impart a feeling of zen on players as they work to clean up colorful and quaint waterways while collecting amazing animals for their shipboard zoo. The only real drawback is the fact that Spilled does not take very long to finish. Our first playthrough was completed in under 90 minutes, although that is not terrible for a $6 game. And as the first title released by a new indie developer, Spilled is extremely good. There are a lot of ways that the core game could probably be expanded with DLCs in the future too.
Anyone looking for a cozy little aquatic adventure with a great environmental message should definitely check out Spilled. There is even a Steam demo available for free if you want to try it out first. So, what are you waiting for? There is oil to vacuum, fires to put out, animals to save and a serial polluter in need of a serious broadside from your water cannon.